"The spirit of the game", when you think about it, is a curious phrase to sit at the heart of a semi-bionic, brand-saturated, geopolitical lantern-show such as the Olympics. What, do you mean that the credibility of these multibillion extravaganzas, these mighty restorers of cities and amplifiers of national glory, rests on a few paragraphs in a rule book? And worse, not just on whether they're being followed, but if they're being honoured?

The eight athletes disqualified from the badminton finals yesterday for ostentatiously throwing their matches did us all a valuable service. They reminded us what we're essentially doing when we watch or play organised games of any kind. We're refreshing the elements of character, and affirming the subtle bonds and codes that allow us to live with each other. The "spiritual" dimension to our games goes deep.

Think of the language – "appalling", "disgusted", "disgrace" – that followed the badminton players' listless behaviour on the court; or recall the boos from the crowd, so harsh in the context of the celebratory atmosphere of the Games. There is more than just the embarrassment of officials or the disgruntlement of ticket-buyers going on here. Something has been violated that really matters to us.

As children, playing games is what we do to forge the very mechanics of our selves-in-society. It doesn't matter how scrappy or strange the materials used, how wildly inappropriate the semi-clothed dolls or multiple-tentacled space aliens are together. Once a group of children decide on the rules of the game – again, however ornate or opaque they are – then those are binding, for as long as the game is played.

We can collectively agree to change the rules if our experience is dissatisfying, or we feel we can squeeze more excitement, thrills or challenge out of it. But once you agree, the mutual expectation is that we are together in this complex space – and that the "spirit" of the game's rules hover over us, enjoyably constraining our actions, pushing us to an agreed finishing line.

We are rehearsing, for fun, the necessary conditions of living with other tricky human beings. We are toying with the social contract, in order to practise it with a subtle literacy.

Considering how primal this scene is for all of us, watching badminton players perform with deliberate listlessness in a game makes us feel that our core social identity is being forcibly unravelled.

Yes, it's a question of how well or badly the governing body has set the rules. Unfortunately for us adults, our version of the schoolyard postmortems on a game gone wrong – which are revised and agreed there in a matter of minutes – becomes a months-or-years-long talkfest about round-robin rules, sporting ethics, authoritarian national coaching. I guess kids aren't also weighed down by considerations of giant branding budgets, or offshore banking finance schemes.

But it is always fascinating to see just how stubborn the impulse is to defend the "integrity of the game", whatever game it is, by defending its common rules. For despite the plutocracy or arrogance of modern players, without those agreed and refereed protocols, you know what? There's no game at all.

However buried and muffled, the civic ideal of games – that through them, we are learning how to balance our human agency with our fellows – still wins out. Formula One racing cars exist in a jungle of regulations, but many of them are about limiting the capability of the cars – stopping them taking corners at 300mph, or removing "traction control" systems – in order that driving skill can still determine technological prowess.

In football, it's no surprise that a creative giant of the field such as Michel Platini – now president of Uefa – is so keen to discipline clubs in terms of their balance of foreign to domestic players, or the size of their debts, or capping wages. Nor that he opposes goal-line technologies for breaking up the "flow" of a game. Platini still holds to the notion that organised sport is a rich space between chance and regulation – where we admire and pursue success on the basis of skill and craft, not fiduciary duty.

Of course, this being play and games, unintended consequences abound. Tougher rules on hard tackling in football, to liberate skilful players, now produces more pirouetting and diving than the average modern dance display. The spectacle of blade-runner Oscar Pistorious, and our angst about the performance of Chinese swimmers, throws up the spectre of a "Translympics" to follow our "Paralympics" – where the competition is between "bio-teams" applying agreed enhancements to what are effectively post-humans.

We should always remember that play is also messing around with materials to see what happens, as much as submitting to the rule-set of a game. Loki and Proteus sit alongside Zeus and Hermes in this department of the human condition. But we shouldn't angst too much about having to struggle to maintain the "spirit" of our games. Dramatising that struggle – to figure out how to live richly but respectfully with others – is the best function the Olympics can fulfil for us.